


Sex Pollen Didn’t Make Them Do It

by Alyndra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Everybody wants Sam Winchester, Gen, Jealousy, Psychic Sam Winchester, Season/Series 02, Sex pollen didn’t make them do it, Vegas Week, gencest, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 10:12:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra/pseuds/Alyndra
Summary: Everyone is weirdly into Sam. Dean doesn’t like it. That’s it, that’s the case.





	Sex Pollen Didn’t Make Them Do It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glovered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glovered/gifts).



> This fic does not contain any incestuous touching but it does have discussions of potentially occurring incest. Curate your reading experience accordingly. 
> 
> Thanks to wetsammy for betaing, appreciate your awesome help so much!
> 
> Some of the ‘likes’ I used for this fic were “everyone hitting on Sam (morgue guys, FBI agents, servers, etc), jealousy, casefic, mention of Sam’s butt, accidental moments of vulnerability or sweetness.” I hope you enjoy!

It was their first Vegas Week without Dad. Sam was brooding about possibly turning evil, and Dean was trying not to brood about possibly having to kill him, because there was no way that was ever going to happen.

Vegas was full of people and therefore an excellent distraction. They could lose themselves in the crowd and never see a familiar face—

“Sam!” A skinny guy in a polo shirt was hurrying towards Dean’s beanpole brother. Sam looked around, bewildered until he caught sight of the guy. “Harry!” 

“Long time no see! I thought you were coming back to Stanford, man. Where’ve you been?”

Sam’s smile got a little rigid. “Just road-tripping,” he said. “This is my brother, Dean. Dean, Harry Peters.” 

“Hey,” Dean grunted. Sam was always making weird friends. 

“I never pictured you as the gambling type,” Harry said. 

“Oh, you should have asked Luis about playing poker with me,” Sam grinned. “He swore off playing with real money in about a week.”

Harry laughed. “No way, I had no idea.”

Harry's clueless laugh grated on Dean’s nerves. This guy didn’t know Sam at all and he was here acting like best buddies? “What kind of wuss won’t even play for real money?” he muttered. 

“Dean!” Sam hissed, elbowing him. “Behave!”

Dean gave Harry his best fake smile. “Great to meet you, but we were on our way to clean up at some tables. Hope to see you again never.” He was in no mood to play nice with Sam’s desire to pretend a normal life was just around the corner, right past the yellow-eyed demon. 

Sam looked pissed off at Dean, but Dean could practically see the _it’s for the best_ thought-wheel grinding him down. Because if Sam was going to turn evil he shouldn’t have any friends or enjoy himself, ever, and everyone was safer away from him. 

Dean ground his teeth and reconsidered dragging him away—but he didn’t have any patience in the tank for rando civilians acting all buddy-buddy, so he marched them away from a baffled Harry and into the nearest casino and settled them at a table as quickly as possible, which was a rookie mistake. They looked around at the other players, and Dean got a sinking feeling when he saw the expression of one particular middle-aged woman.

“Sam! Sam Winchester, that is you, isn’t it!” she marveled. “You were in my biology class, back at Strottsman High! Not for very long, but I never forget a face.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lenowsky!” Sam said. “Of course I remember, you had us do that unit on forensic procedures that had the school board throwing a fit—” 

“It’s hardly my fault that everything on TV is wrong,” she said, glancing at her cards and flicking a coin towards the pot. “And what kind of teacher would I be if I let my students out into the world with such a gap in their civil education?”

“I remember the vice-principal asking why you couldn’t just stick to frog dissections like everybody else,” Sam laughed. “But your stuff was way more useful.”

Dean coughed.

“Oh, sorry,” Sam said. “This is Dean.” He must still be pissed at Dean, though, because he left it there.

“Pleasure,” Mrs. Lenowsky said perfunctorily, taking her cue from Sam’s shortness and returning her attention to him. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Sam, and not just because a teacher always likes to think they’ve taught useful things. They made me fight so hard to teach the autopsy material. You would have thought I was letting high school students actually _perform_ them, to hear the PTA go on about it…”

Dean tuned her out and tried to focus on the game. Autopsies were relevant to their line of work, but Dad had taught them plenty. What did Sam need from his old high school teacher?

“You use forensics for your job?” A guy in a suit at the table interrupted. “What are you, a cop?”

“Or a criminal mastermind?” someone else put in and the table laughed.

Sam twisted his mouth, unamused. “Most people don’t know just how common it is for forensics to give cops the answers they want,” he said, lecturing tone in full force. “Do you have any idea how many people are wrongfully imprisoned with faulty forensics? Just because certain leaps of logic elude investigators…”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Lenowsky agreed. “The backlogs of untested DNA samples would fill _warehouses_ , while they look at strands of hair under a two-dollar magnifying glass and call it science.”

“Fold,” Dean said, throwing his cards down in frustration. “I’m going to find a better table, there’s no damn cards here.” He stood up and stormed off to the back of the room, aware of Sam making a much more polite exit to follow him.

“What the hell is your problem, Dean?” Sam hissed, grabbing his shirt. 

“My problem is I just want to make money, not small talk!” Dean said. 

“Yeah, right. I was handling the small talk just fine. You didn’t have to be a massive jerk…”

The security guy was eyeing them. Dean eyed him back, swallowed the first three things he wanted to say, and took Sam’s hand off his jacket. “Whatever. Let’s just find a different place.” He drew Sam’s attention to the guard with a flick of his eyes. 

Sam shrugged. “Fine. Whatever you want, Dean.”

Dean kept staring down the security guy as they headed for the door. Wouldn’t do to let him get ideas. 

The guard—holy crap, was he _checking out Sam’s butt?_ Dean redoubled his scowl. 

_That_ got some reaction, if not quite what Dean would have liked. The guard raised his hands with an innocent grin like Dean was a jealous boyfriend or something, and then followed up with a wink and a thumbs up. 

_Definitely_ time for a new casino. This one sucked.

* * *

Over the course of the next hour, Dean started to feel more and more like a crazy person. People who had known Sam for a few days, years ago, kept coming up to them to say hi, and people who _hadn’t_ ever met him before were acting flirty towards Sam now, too. It was like Sam was catnip. Dean was in the middle of fending off three waitresses all competing for his attention when it clicked over in his brain: this wasn’t normal. This was a case. All at once his irritation faded away: no point being mad at people for some curse or something. Almost as fast, he felt fear replace it: was this the next manifestation of whatever was that was going on with Sam?

“Sam,” he hissed, as soon as the waitresses cleared off. “Something’s going on.”

“Yeah, with you,” Sam hissed back. “What crawled up your butt and died?”

Okay, maybe Dean had been acting pissy. Whatever was making everybody else cast doe-eyes at Sammy obviously didn’t work on somebody who knew him as well as Dean did. “There’s a case here, Sam,” Dean said.

They were magic words, and always had been for the Winchesters. Bickering always got put on pause for a case. Sam got serious immediately. “What is it?”

”Everybody’s all over you today,” Dean said. “It’s freaky.”

“I can’t believe you,” Sam said. “Your jealousy issues are not a case, Dean!” He got up and stormed off as far as the bar, where the bartender immediately left the customers he was schmoozing to come ask what he could do for Sam.

Was that a suggestive eyebrow lift on the bartender or not? Dean seriously considered the possibility that he was imagining things. It could be coincidence, five old acquaintances walking up to Sam out of a crowd this size in an hour and a half. Traveling as much as they did, they had a lot of acquaintances around the country. And everybody came to Vegas.

Dean watched as a girl sitting across the room got up and beelined straight over to Sam. “Sam? Hey, it’s Lori! We met last year in Iowa, you and your brother saved my life!”

Okay, Dean was right here. No way she’d have missed seeing his own handsome face if she’d spent even two seconds looking around. It was definitely a case.

Dean sat back and watched, arms folded across his chest. Sam didn’t think Dean knew a case when he saw one? Dean had been hunting practically his whole life. He made a private bet with himself about how long it would take Sam to come crawling back, admitting that Dean was right…

* * *

“All right _fine_ , it’s a case,” Sam said, slinging himself into the seat opposite Dean. Dean checked his watch: just under an hour. Damn.

“Pick up any cursed objects lately?” Dean was mature enough not to gloat. 

“Not unless you’re talking about the tacos we had for lunch.” Sam sighed and eyed the room warily, putting his hand up to partially hide his face. 

“I’ve been thinking about whether we can nail down when this started,” Dean leaned forward. “Before we hit the crowds today, it was just us in the car since yesterday. And the diner waitress seemed kinda into you last night…”

Sam eyed him. “You’ve only been acting off for the past nine hours.”

“What are you talking about,” Dean said. “I’m perfectly normal. Whatever whammy you’re throwing on everybody else, I know you too well to be affected by it.”

“Really,” Sam said, folding his arms. “So when you were acting like a pissy jealous girlfriend before you realized what was going on?”

“My spidey senses were tingling,” Dean said with dignity. 

“And when you kept pulling my hair and made me an origami bird with the wrappers at the taco place we stopped for lunch?”

“Perfectly normal behavior,” Dean said. A challenging stare was great for moments like these. Dean kept his leveled.

“And when you played ‘that whiny emo rock stuff’ because you thought I’d like it?”

Crap. Sam was right. Dean had abandoned the classics. He had profaned Baby’s tape deck for Sam.

Dean was screwed.

* * *

They hightailed it out of Vegas to retrace their steps from that morning. Some encounter they hadn’t noticed at the time was still their best bet for a solution to this curse or whatever it was.

Besides, the bar was starting to feel a little crowded with all the people coming in to eye Sam like a chunk of prime beefsteak. Dean nearly had to hit a few of them just to get to the door without Sam getting molested. They were lucky it didn’t cause a riot.

Sam himself was no help. There was being a forward-thinking non-judgemental liberal nice guy, and then there was smiling back at the guy who was trying to grab your ass on the way out the door.

“Sam! You can’t encourage guys like that!” Dean hissed in his ear. 

“I know,” Sam sighed, looking away. “It wouldn’t be fair to him if it’s really just a curse making them think they want me.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean muttered. What could Sam see in that guy? He was tall, built, and good-looking, sure, but…

“We need to fix this,” Sam said glumly. “I can’t get laid at all, it wouldn’t be right as long as this thing is hovering over me. It’d be like Andy telling people to have sex with him.”

Dean shuddered at the reminder of the psychic kid and the way he’d been able to make Dean do what he wanted. Dean had _wanted_ to do whatever Andy had said. “I would have killed him,” Dean said. “If Andy was doing that, it would have been evil, period, no questions asked.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. But he was wistfully eyeing the crowd of people who stared longingly at him as they finally escaped out the door.

They made it to the Impala with only a few people ambling casually after them like some weird strain of sex-crazed zombie. Settling back into her seats felt like coming home. Dean breathed deeply. “Sam… you don’t suppose whatever this is could be something to do with your—you know, whatever you’ve got going on with you?”

“Whatever the Yellow-Eyed Demon is after, you mean?” Sam said without surprise. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything, but that might not mean anything.”

“Damn,” Dean said. “Well, we work it like a case, whatever it is. We’ll figure it out.” He didn’t have to look over at Sam to see the grateful look Sam was throwing him.

* * *

The taco joint turned out to get some of their produce from the local hedgewitch, on further investigation. “I always said eating that rabbit food was unnatural,” Dean said, pleased to be vindicated. “If you’d skipped the salad like I did, we’d still be raking in the cash at the card tables.”

Sam frowned absently. “There was a leaf that was a funny shape, now that I’m thinking of it,” he said. “It didn’t match the rest of them. I don’t think I’d ever seen it before, at least not outside of a herbology guide.”

“So we go ask the witch what she’s doing poisoning random strangers just trying to get a taco,” Dean said. “Sounds evil already if you ask me.”

“There could be an innocent explanation,” Sam said stubbornly. In the distance, a small line of cars appeared, trailing hopefully after them from Vegas.

“Unbelievable,” Dean muttered. “Can’t they find someone else to get horny for?”

“I guess not,” Sam said. Was that a trace of smugness? “Maybe the only way to break the spell for them is to, y’know, get it out of their system. It’d be a hardship for me, of course, that many people in a row, but I’d make the sacrifice. Whatever’s necessary to save those people, that’s what we have to do, right?”

“Don’t even talk about that, Sammy,” Dean said, gritting his teeth. “I’m prepared to defend your honor with my life against whatever hordes of zombies are following us. They could be infectious. They could turn violent as soon as they touch you, we don’t have any idea what will happen. You can’t give up that easily.”

“They didn’t seem zombie-like,” Sam said. “They talked just like ordinary people.”

“You didn’t even notice anything was off,” Dean said quickly. “Your powers of observation are compromised.”

“There was hardly anything to notice,” Sam said.

“My point exactly,” Dean said.

Sam huffed through his nose. “They aren’t zombies, Dean!”

* * *

When they got to the witch’s house, the garden was by far the most noticeable thing about it. It sprawled all around the house, with crisscrossing paths that networked through it. Recognizable vegetables—lettuce, carrots, tomatoes—covered broad swaths, and anybody who knew witch lore would recognize the most popular herbs for spellwork sown in amidst the basil and oregano. 

“I have a new idea about what happened,” Sam muttered. “Let’s look along the edges of the lettuce patch.”

Sure enough, butted right up against the lettuce bed without even a path between them was a section of the plant Sam said he recognized from his salad that morning. It was leafy and rounded, and even Dean could admit it would be easy to accidentally mix in with a bunch of lettuce.

Sam picked a leaf and went up to knock on the door. Dean approved of how assertively he pounded it.

The witch who answered had to be past forty, but she wore it well. Her hair was long and her smile got sultry as she looked at Sam from bottom to top. She had to crane her head back—nearly everybody did, for Sam—but not as much as most. “What can I do for you, honey?” she drawled.

Dean could see Sam swallow. Dean was leaning against a porch rail, far enough from the door not to crowd Sam, but close enough to have a clear shot at the woman if it became necessary. His elbow nudged his gun for reassurance.

“What can you tell me about this herb, please?” Sam asked her, reasonably politely.

“Oh, that’s one of my favorites,” she said, puzzled but willing to humor him. “Not many people grow it these days. It’s a mood intensifier—instead of encouraging a specific feeling, it just gives a subtle boost to what you’re feeling already.”

“And you can work spells with it that affect a large number of people at a time?” Sam asked, nodding.

“I suppose?” she said doubtfully. “I don’t really know why you would. Like I said, the effects are subtle. You must be quite sensitive to have noticed it and bothered to track it down here. Unless you had a crowd that was all feeling the same thing already, I don’t imagine there’d be much effect.”

“You weren’t working any spells with it recently?” Sam asked, more sharply.

“No,” she said, straightening her back at his tone. “Who are you, and why do you ask?”

“I’m Sam. There was a leaf like this one in my taco salad earlier today, and the effects have been—less than completely subtle, let’s say.”

“Oh,” she said. The wind went out of her sails, but she still didn’t look like she’d been caught in a nefarious plot. “I’m sorry for your trouble, Sam. How are you feeling now, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Sam said. “It’s everybody else I’m worried about.”

The witch shook her head. “I don’t understand. Any kind of herb you eat should be limited in its effect to you.” She tapped his chest lightly with one finger. “You can’t give people indigestion by getting it yourself.”

“Unless you happen to be psychic,” Dean said suddenly, understanding dawning. “You’re broadcasting, Sammy.”

The witch took a couple steps back. Good, she was way too far into Sammy’s space as it was. She closed her eyes for a second and shook herself. “Oh dear. Yes, it’s possible that it could intensify psychic abilities, as well. I seem to have—I apologize for the unprofessional behavior. I’ve got a lid on it now. Yes, I see what you mean, that could be quite...disconcerting. Were you around very many people?”

“Only in the middle of Las Vegas,” Sam said dryly, and she winced again.

“The effects should wear off after no more than forty-eight hours,” she said. “I’m afraid no one’s ever bothered to brew up an antidote to it; most people could eat a whole handful of leaves in their salad and go through their day quite normally, with perhaps an outburst or two if they’d had one simmering.”

“Great,” Sam said; more evidence that he was a freak. Dean knew he’d probably refuse to ever eat another salad leaf he didn’t recognize again. 

“I am sorry for my mistake,” the witch said. “If you’d like to be experimented on, I could whip something up that might reduce the effects. But I fully understand if you say no. Avoiding populated areas tomorrow should solve most of the problems.”

Right on cue, the five or six cars still on their trail started turning down the witch’s road. Sam and Dean looked out at them, resigned, while the witch looked between them, startled. “Do you know them?”

“You know what,” Dean said, “we really don’t. But we do need to be going now.”

“I’m sure if you talk to them, it’ll clear everything up better than I can,” Sam said apologetically. They hurried to get in the car and peeled out just as people started piling into the witch’s yard. “Did they say where they were going?” Dean heard, voices fading behind them as they made it out onto the open road.

* * *

They drove east. Another nice thing about Vegas was it was surrounded by a lot of desert. If you wanted to get away from people in a hurry you could. Dean was in a hurry.

They drove in silence for half an hour, long enough for the city glow to fade from the night sky. It was clear and without lights, the stars multiplied into detailed tapestries. Finally, Sam opened his mouth because he was Sam and he couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry, man.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Dean said, hands tight on the steering wheel. “Not your fault the witch drugged you into blowing your psychic whammy over everybody in sight.”

“It’s not a vampire’s fault they have to drink blood, either,” Sam said bitterly. “Doesn’t make it alright.”

“Yeah, well, nobody’s out anything except a little gas money,” Dean said. “Which they probably would’ve lost at the tables, anyway.”

“We’re not even halfway through how long this thing is supposed to last for,” Sam said glumly. “There’s still plenty of time for it all to go pear-shaped.”

“Hey, it’s just you and me now,” Dean said. “And you know I’m not going to care what kind of mind-whammy you’re broadcasting.”

“Yeah, you still don’t even think it’s been affecting you,” Sam said. “At least if those other people get freaked out by me, they don’t have to ever see me again. You’re different.”

Dean chewed on that. Okay, he could kind of see where Sammy was coming from. But he still didn’t feel any different, and he couldn’t imagine Sam wanting anything from him that he wouldn’t be okay with. “Okay, so let’s talk about it.”

“Huh?” That jerked Sam out of brooding, at least.

“Break it down. What exactly’s been going on in your head? And what’s it doing to people?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I guess I felt lonely, to start with. And that’s when people started coming up to me.”

 _What do you need to be lonely for, you’ve got me right here, don’t you?_ Dean didn’t say. He’d been trying all day to make Sam feel better, too—but apparently, Dean wasn’t enough. “Lonely, okay. That’s not so bad,” he said neutrally.

“And then later, after people started flirting with me, I got horny, and everybody started flirting even more,” Sam admitted, staring straight ahead rather than looking at Dean.

“Yeah, might have noticed that part,” Dean said. “Gotta admit, Sammy, if I had a ‘get laid’ power like that, I’d be over the moon.”

Sam chuffed. “Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you.” He seemed sad, though.

“So what, you worried I’m gonna throw myself at you tonight or tomorrow, all uncontrollable lust and _take me now_?”

“Not quite like that,” Sam said. 

“Like what then?” Dean asked. “You still horny, still throwing psychic ‘I need a little spoon’ vibes out at the universe?”

Sam was silent. 

“You are, aren’t you,” Dean said.

“Maybe,” Sam muttered.

“Well, I’m not feeling any uncontrollable urge to throw myself at you, in case you were worried,” Dean said pointedly.

“Good,” Sam said. He paused. “Any controllable urges?”

Crap. This was why Dean usually hated talking. It always wound up places that it shouldn’t. “You mean, like the urge to get you away from people? Or the urge to sleep with the nearest warm body?” As soon as Dean said it, be became aware that he _had_ in fact, been feeling horny for a while now, pushed way down into a low background thrum of irritability because there was no chance of satisfying it, not with a case to work out or Sammy to take care of. “Anyway, so what if I do have some feelings? Not like everything I feel is because of you, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Sam burst out. “If I knew how this worked, Dean, don’t you think I’d know how to shut it off?” He sat there breathing hard. Probably feeling guilty for everything in the world again.

“Well, hey. If I _do_ decide to wantonly fling myself at you, you can just enjoy it and I promise I won’t be mad later.”

This attempt at reassurance seemed to frustrate Sam even more. “Except you’re under the influence now when you tell me that, so I can’t take that promise seriously. You’d still have every right to be mad later.”

“C’mon, are you seriously telling me I’m too drunk to consent? That’s such bullshit,” Dean complained.

“It’s not like drinking. The witch said the effects of this thing are subtle. There’s no way to know what you’d be feeling naturally and what‘s just the stupid herb talking.”

“Or what I might be feeling naturally and the herb just makes louder,” Dean said. “So what’s the big deal at the end of the day? Whatever happens, we can chalk it up to weird effects and leave it behind.”

“Seriously? ‘I’ve never committed incest with my brother, except for that one time with the salad leaf that might or might not have made us do it?’ I don’t think it has a good ring to it, Dean.”

“Well, fine then, we’ll spend the next thirty-six hours feeling horny and frustrated and whatever else you start feeling, and then day after tomorrow I can let you know if I’d still be down to do the nasty with you and we can go from there.”

“Still?” Sam picked up on that, of course. “Are you saying that right now you’d…”

“Only if it’d keep you from being so moody,” Dean said quickly. “If you’re just going to be more annoying, not less, there’s not really any point, is there?”

“You are the absolute worst,” Sam said, and they drove in silence for a while. The road unspooled underneath their tires, as far ahead as Dean could see in the flat Nevada desert. This was a main highway, so they’d driven it before, as kids and teenagers and a couple times in the past year. There were turnoffs to smaller roads, a few they’d taken but most they hadn’t. It wouldn’t take much to drive off onto a road they’d never been on before. They could spend their entire lives driving, and there would still be roads that they’d never seen before. It was a pretty cool thought.

“Sam?” Dean asked, suspicious.

“Yeah?” Sam said.

“Are you getting all philosophical about roads untraveled now?”

There was a startled silence. “Uhh...maybe, why?”

“Because it’s catching,” Dean said, deeply put out. “God, I was voluntarily talking about feelings, too. That had to be from you.”

“I didn’t—wasn’t—” Sam struggled, and Dean grinned a little. Sam caught a hint of it and gave up on defending himself. “I tried to tell you this could get bad!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean said. “Pear-shaped, blah blah. I heard you.” He fiddled with the radio until he found Sam’s emo rock station from that afternoon, before they knew what was happening. It was staticky from being almost out of range now, but Dean turned it up anyway. “I blame you if I start thinking this is good,” he told Sam, and settled in to listen.


End file.
